It's hard to improve on traditional wedding vows

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By ERIN ANDERSEN/Lincoln Journal Star

 In 1983 Stu and Kelli Kerns wrote their own wedding vows.

“There was still that wave from the ’70s where some people were still doing that kind of thing,” recalled Kerns, pastor at Zion Church in Lincoln.

Twenty-five years later, Kerns could not tell you exactly what he and his wife promised each other in front of family, friends and God.

What does stick in his mind is how nerve-wracking it was to come up with the right words, write them poetically and then memorize them.

These days, Kerns and many other ministers offer couples the option of writing or  personalizing their marriage vows.

But rarely do couples take them up on the offer.

“Usually they look at me, like, ‘Who would want to do that?’” said Kerns, who in his 18 years of officiating marriages has yet to have a couple write and recite their own vows.

Traditional wedding vows — minus a few tweaks here and there (such as the bride’s promise to obey her husband) — have withstood the test of time and are similar across religions.

Aside from some differences in wording, most traditional wedding vows ask the bride and groom to pledge to have and to hold “for better or worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health” to love, cherish and honor until death.

The vows Kerns typically uses come from the 1946 version of the Presbyterian Book of Common Worship, but the actual words predate the book by more than 150 years, he said.

“Traditions, in general, anchor us to our past,” Kerns said. “We want to know we are not floating along in an abyss. At crucial moments in our life we want to feel those cultural anchors that unite us with generations that have gone before us.”

The Rev. Bill Thornton of Capital City Christian Church said even those couples who are contemplating writing their own vows usually decide to go with the traditional vows after reading them.

“They say, ‘It says it pretty well,’” Thornton said.

“(The vows) express the ideal of a lifelong partnership,” he said.

And despite the dismal national statistics on marriage successes and failures, couples enter into marriage firmly believing their union will last their lifetimes, Thornton said.

“Traditional vows are time-tested and express the truths that are rooted in the scriptures. They were literally thousands of years in the making. And I think there is something substantial about that,” he said.

The traditional vow is “all-comprehensive and poetic,” said Andrew McDonald of Westminster Presbyterian Church.

There are times when couples tell McDonald that they are thinking about writing their own vows. While he doesn’t talk them out of it, he does make sure they understand the importance of the words they choose.

“This is such an important moment, you don’t want to say something that is not fitting for the depth of the occasion. You don’t want to say something silly or light at a time when it really is about the importance of this vow,” McDonald said.

“The traditional vows have a depth that has been tried and tested over so many years that it is hard to improve upon the decades and centuries of wisdom that have shaped the vows in their current form,” McDonald said.

“The symbolic meaning of the vow is said in the presence of God and in the presence of all these people who are waiting to be transformed in their imagination by what you say. … There are vows that don’t have that gravitas. If you don’t have the sense of power and the importance, then it doesn’t take on the meaning.”

McDonald recalled an older man whose wife had a debilitating disease. She was bedridden for 10 years, and the man was the sole caregiver.

“I asked, ‘How do you do it?’” McDonald recalled.

The man responded, “A long time ago I said in sickness and in health.”

“So if somebody writes their own vows, are they really going to remember?” McDonald asked.

“Part of the power (of the marriage vow) is that every wedding you go to you hear something close to that vow. So you yourself are reminded of the vow that you made.

“So the community is not just quietly marrying new couples, but reinforcing what they themselves said 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, even 70 years ago. Every time they hear it they say, ‘Yeah, that’s my promise, too,’” McDonald said.

“If everybody writes their own, it’s not going to have the power.”

Reach Erin Andersen at 473-7217 or eandersen@journalstar.com.